


Xunantunich

by butwordsarewind (sungabraverday)



Series: Cities Headcanons [17]
Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Belize - Freeform, Gen, Personified Cities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungabraverday/pseuds/butwordsarewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not what she was called, when people still filled her streets, and yet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Xunantunich

They’ve seen her, wandering her neatly trimmed plazas and her towering stone temples, reclaimed from the encroaching jungles. Some will call to her, ask her why she’s there, who she is, what she’s wearing. They say that the city is haunted by her, a ghost who walks straight into the stone steps of the pyramids and vanishes. They call her the Stone Lady - Xunantunich - and it’s not what she was called, back when people still filled her streets, but it is perfectly, exquisitely _her_ , and she has taken it for her own. It is a name for life after death.

There has always been humanity at her fringes, just at the edge of what she could feel, on the banks of the Mopan River. She has never forgotten what she was, the city of clever and resilient people, who lasted even when other Cities began to fall. She still treasures and remembers those people, though now they are but a memory.

The archeologists spend years meticulously peeling away trees and vines and grass, so much grass. Their touch is tender and careful, and it feels like a love letter as they return her to glory - not to what she once was, she will never be that again - and recognition.

She misses the feel of feet running and playing the ball game, and of the blood that spilled when the game was done. Now there are only skinned knees of tourists falling on the steep steps of El Castillo to water her soil.

It is different, and yet, it is enough. She is satiated, and she is loved. She may not have her own people, but this is what it takes for her to feel whole. And she will love them in return.


End file.
